


Telling Time

by 7PercentSolution



Series: Got My Eye on You [12]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5265005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PercentSolution/pseuds/7PercentSolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade realises that Sherlock needs the occasional nudge... one shot</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telling Time

Lestrade was a punctual man. Proud of it, too. He had been raised by two parents who parcelled their day out in half hours, each allocated to a particular duty. His father woke early at the mercy of an alarm clock, ate the breakfast that his wife made for him, and then went to work; he was a train-yard signalman. Punctuality _mattered_  in his business. When drivers brought their trains in late, there were consequences: frustrated passengers, annoyed commuters, and the inevitable knock-on consequences of one late train messing up a lot of other trains which, through no fault of their own, were then going to be late. It was inconsiderate. When signalling problems added to those delays, he'd come home distressed at the number of people he'd let down, through no fault of his own. His dad didn't repair the ancient signals; he just had to make do with what the British Rail system gave him.

His mum was equally committed to clockwork. She had to be- juggling the demands of her husband, getting her kids off to school on time, managing the household and still finding time to be a teacher's aide at the local primary school every day from 10am to 2. She helped with the special needs children; it took a one-to-one focus for many of them to get the best out of school. There, she had to be patient, and use the time she was given to get the best for each of her special pupils.

So, Greg and his sister Carole grew up with parents knowing the value of good timekeeping. Not being punctual was being selfish in their book, and it became Greg's view, too. Of course, no one could manage a nine-to-five approach to a murder enquiry team at the Met. Murderers just didn't respect the rules, and were selfish by nature. So, he got used to being called out at all hours, night and day, on weekends and even recalled from his holidays, if the Yard was really desperate. It drove his wife Louise round the bend. "I can never plan anything around you, Greg. Your career is just…so inconvenient." He had some sympathy with her complaints.

But, timekeeping was important in his business. A time of death ruled some suspects in, gave alibis to others. The amount of time it took to die- to bleed to death, to suffocate, to succumb to poison – influenced decisions about intent and motive, whether something was premeditated or accidental. In his business, every minute counted, and he counted every minute. It mattered.

Over the years of working with Sherlock Holmes, however, he'd learned that time was relative. Certainly it was when it came to the way the man himself worked. On the one hand, Sherlock could arrive within minutes of a summons to a crime scene, and his grasp of London's geography and road system meant he could predict to within a minute or two just how long it would take for him to get there by taxi. The cab drivers were in awe of the man's ability to tell them what route to take to avoid snarl-ups, road works and accidents. So, as long as he said he would come, then Lestrade could count on him turning up, like clockwork.

On a crime scene, Sherlock was all whirling motion, assessing the case within minutes and putting things together that would have taken his officers hours of dogged plodding work, if they could manage to think of the possible connections between the data in the first place. On a crime scene, Sherlock compressed time to the shortest possible distance between two deductive points. That's why Lestrade was desperate to have him on board- especially on those cases where a delay could lead to another death. To know that a short cut like Sherlock could save a life made it nothing short of criminally negligent not to get him involved. That's why the DI always felt pained when his description of a case raised a "Boring" response. Not only would their chances of clearing up a case be lower without Sherlock, it also meant that it would take much longer to reach that failure, eating up scarce police resource. There was simply too much crime and not enough of one Sherlock to go around.

But, Greg also knew that Sherlock's sense of time was a little elastic. His nephew Sam experienced the problem, too. People on the Autistic Spectrum often had problems judging the passage of time. He'd once watched Sherlock spend four hours experimenting on the same slide, without any idea that time was passing- totally absorbed meant no sense of time passing at all. For Sherlock, time was relative- it all depended on what he was being expected to do. And that was the problem right now.

The object of his concern was currently stretched out on the sofa in Baker Street, totally immobilised. Eyes closed, hands steepled on his chest as if in prayer, the brunet looked like one of those medieval stone effigies on a tomb- inert, unresponsive.

Lestrade had seen Sherlock in a pose like this on many occasions, pre-John. He'd felt relieved when John moved into the flat, because he appreciated having someone else to watch over Sherlock when he got like this, when time stood still.

Unfortunately for the DI, John was away. A family issue, up in the Midlands, a dying aunt with no children needed someone to help her put her affairs in order before she lost her battle with congestive heart failure. So, John had left Greg "in charge" of Sherlock.

"Just look in occasionally, will you? Find a case that will keep him on a crime scene or at the morgue where you and Molly can split the difference of making sure he doesn't do anything daft. Ideally, you'll have a nice juicy triple murder in a locked room, involving no obvious weapons or cause of death."

Greg had laughed at the description. "For Sherlock, that's better than Christmas, Birthday and New Year all rolled into one- and the chances of it happening are pretty slim, too."

John laughed, "I know, but I can always hope, can't I? I expect to be gone a week or so. I've asked Mrs Hudson to try to keep the fridge stocked, but she is not our housekeeper, and she's certainly not Sherlock's nanny, that woman died years ago probably of despair, so there are limits to what I can expect of our landlady."

Greg tried, he really tried to find a case worthy of the man's attention. After the first day, he started harassing his colleagues- other DIs on the other Murder Investigation Teams- to see if he could 'loan' them Sherlock, if it was juicy enough. He'd even started scouring the police forces outside of the Met's jurisdiction. Alas, the criminal fraternity was not obliging. Every possible suggestion had met with a one word text reply: BORING. Sherlock didn't even bother to put his initials at the end.

On the second day, Lestrade cleaned out the last of the cold case files and sent them by messenger to Baker Street. They came back annotated a day later. His people and three other teams as well were now hard at work chasing down new lines of enquiry, none of which attracted Sherlock's interest enough to actually leave the flat, or to even answer his phone. Every text he sent got the same instant reply, "boring". A phone call went straight to the voicemail message: a baritone monotone, "You know who this is and you know what to do, just don't be boring" and then the beep.

In the evening of the third day, Greg decided to cross the threshold of Baker Street and see how the brunet was dealing with the inactivity.

"Oh, Detective Inspector, I am  _so_  pleased to see you!" Mrs Hudson heard him use his key to let himself into the ground floor of 221 Baker Street. She gave a worried glance upstairs. "It's been awfully quiet up there last night and today. No violin playing, no charging up and down the stairs. I haven't even heard the floorboards creak when he starts pacing. If I didn't have the evidence of my own eyes, I'd say the flat was unoccupied. I swear he hasn't moved from the settee. All that lovely food in the fridge- he hasn't touched it. I went up yesterday to make him a cup of tea, tried to cook him something- well, he just told me to leave him alone. The kitchen table was actually bare- none of those tubes and flasks and things he use on those experiments of his. Today, he didn't even reply to me. I'm use to him being rude or in a strop, but this….silence… well, it’s worrying."

He climbed the seventeen steps and unlocked the flat door. The flat was quiet, so his footsteps on the hall floor were certain to carry far enough to be heard by the man lying on the sofa, but there was no acknowledgement when he entered the room.

"Sherlock."

No reply. He was there in his pyjamas and dressing gown, a day or more's stubble evident. There was a cold mug of tea on the coffee table; from the skin of milk that had formed, probably there since this morning.

Greg picked up the mug and took it into the kitchen, and poured it down the sink. While he was there he made himself a cup of coffee and poured Sherlock a large glass of water. He then took the drinks back into the living room and sat down on the coffee table so he was close enough to Sherlock that the younger man would be able to smell him. By experience, Greg knew that Sherlock's sense of his personal space was influenced by his sense of smell, and Greg was now in his nose the way others might get in someone's face- up close and personal.

"I'm going to get increasingly hard to ignore, Sherlock, if you don't acknowledge that I'm here. It's up to you. Push me to the limit and I might even be forced to put a hand on you."

That threat made one grey green eye snap open. "You wouldn't dare."

"Don't push your luck, sunshine." He smiled.

The eye shut.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Irrelevant."

"How long has it been since you ate something?"

"Don't know; don't care."

"Well, I do. Because if you're there lying in a state of decomposition when John comes home, he will confront me with your dead body and accuse me of manslaughter."

"I'm not going to starve to death, Lestrade. Go away, your conscience is clear."

"But you could die of dehydration. I'm not joking, Sherlock. Somewhere in that Mind Palace of yours is the fact that unless you consume 3 litres a day of fluids, you won't make it until John gets back."

"What day is it?"

This question surprised Greg. "What day do you think it is?"

"Don't know." He still hadn't opened his eyes again.

Greg pondered this. "Why not? You know everything… What's so difficult about keeping track of time? It's important Sherlock."

"No, it isn't."

"Explain it to me; I'm an idiot and I don't understand how it is possible to NOT notice the fact that the sun has come up and gone down three times since John left, and that you should have had nine meals and numerous cups of tea, coffee or, even better, water, between now and then."

Sherlock sighed. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try to explain it to me."

"You waste so much time thinking about time. It obsesses you- oh, not just you, everybody's the same. I can't be bothered. I don't get hungry or thirsty the way you do. Sometimes I think I might be feeling something, but I can't be bothered to recognise it as what you call hunger or thirst. There's no compulsion to do anything about it. Sometimes my stomach hurts and occasionally I get dizzy. But that happens irrespective of whether I eat or drink- it's just the way I often feel. Time becomes irrelevant when I don't need it for the purposes of The Work, or an experiment. So, I stop caring about it. Why waste the energy? Who came up with the idea of 'time' in the first place? It's just a way of describing something. I could call it a widget and say that there are 240 widgets in a gizmo, and that gizmos are useful to organise your day- but not mine."

His eyes opened, and he looked cross. "For that matter- why does a night matter? What difference does it make that the sun is up or down? I don't sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time no matter when I do it, so the idea that night is somehow different than day is…irrelevant."

Greg thought about it. If one lived entirely on one's own, he supposed that time would be irrelevant. "But, Sherlock, you live in a world of people who live according to time."

"Do I? Only when I'm working. If I'm not working, then time stands still. Someday it will just stop. I don't mind. If there's no work, then there's no point."

That made the DI wince. It made him remember a rooftop in London and an intentional overdose. "Sherlock, don't… please, don't say things like that, don't think it. You are more than the work. You can't be that selfish."

A cloud seemed to pass over Sherlock's face, a not-quite-there expression. Then his eyes opened and he looked at Lestrade as if seeing him for the first time. "I don't understand."

Greg drew in a deep breath. "No, I don't suppose you do. You see the world from your point of view; I get it. I'm not judging you for that. But, you need to understand that not everyone is like you. So let me tell you what it's like out here, looking in. Every time you do this, it doesn't hurt you, but it does hurt the people out here who care about you."

The brunet started to open his mouth, but Greg got there first. "I know…don't bother saying it; you've told me often enough. You don't care what other people think."

He was finding this painful to say. He'd seen the younger man lying on the sofa grow up from a cocky seventeen year old with an attitude problem almost as big as his unique talent for seeing things and making sense of them. Over the years, Sherlock had been through a lot of pain, some of it inflicted by others, some by his own actions. Greg always tried hard to do the best for Sherlock, even though at times that brought him into conflict with what the headstrong young man thought.

He tried to summon a way to say it that would reach Sherlock. "There are some of us out here, Sherlock, who aren't just 'people'. We matter more because we are actually part of you. You can't ignore us, because that's like ignoring one of your arms or legs- or, even better, a room in that bloody Mind Palace of yours. You can't pretend that we aren't in there with you. You can't delete us."

Greg sighed and stood up. "I'm taking the time to tell you this, to come over here, to cook us both a meal, because unlike you, I will fall over if I don't eat something tonight. I told John I would keep an eye on you, and I keep my promises. And you will take the time to eat it with me."

"Why?"

"Why, what? Why will I fall over if I don't eat? Why will I cook a meal to share with you? Why do I keep my promises to your flatmate? Or why am I a part of your Mind Palace? The last one you have to answer for yourself. The others you already know the answer to, you're just being stubborn."

There was no reply.

He went into the kitchen and rummaged in the fridge, deciding on an omelette, with cheese -simple and quick, but nutritious. He spotted the odd little bottles at the back and pulled one out. The label said, "One nasal spray dose, twice daily: morning and just before bed."

He went back into the living room. "What's this?"

Sherlock opened his eyes just long enough to spot the nasal spray bottle.

"Oxytocin."

Greg was none the wiser. "According to the label you are the intended recipient."

Sherlock nodded.

"Then by my calculation, you've missed six doses since John left."

"Probably."

"Sherlock, what kind of answer is that? You either took it as required, or you didn't."

"Then my best guess is that I haven't."

"Why not?"

"Didn't seem important. Lost track of time. Take your pick."

"Do what you have to do with it right now. If you don't, I swear I will sit on your chest and stuff the damn thing up your nose myself."

That provoked a furrowed brow. Then Sherlock sat up and reached for the bottle.

Greg gave it to him and watched him complete the procedure. "Right, now drink that glass of water." He picked up Sherlock's phone from the coffee table, and disappeared into the kitchen.

When he returned twenty minutes later, Sherlock was sitting up. He handed him a plate of eggs and sat himself down at the table between the windows. He didn't watch Sherlock; he knew that his nephew Sam hated being watched when he was eating, so he assumed it probably annoyed him as much. When he wasn't eating his own omelette, he was poking the keys of Sherlock's phone.

When he finished, he collected a now empty plate and glass from Sherlock and went into the kitchen.

The sound of running water and the scent of dishwashing liquid reached Sherlock. Time passed, he didn't bother to keep count. Lestrade would be done when he was done. Didn't need to know how long it took. Sherlock was slowly sinking back into that half-hibernation stage on the sofa, listening to his stomach and gut deal with the solids that had just arrived. That distraction from the brainwork annoyed him, briefly.

"Sherlock, pay attention."

He sighed, but opened his eyes to look at the expression on the face of the silver-haired man. Lestrade looked tired, and a little fed up, but very determined.

"I'm listening." But he didn’t bother to sit up.

"Good, because I will say this once. I'm not your keeper; I'm not your flatmate. What you do in your own home is your own business. But I've got too much invested in you to watch you wreck that brain of yours because you can't be bothered to keep track of time. So, your phone is going to annoy you over the next four days. I've programmed three different alarm ring tones." He pressed a button, and the sounds of a chorus of boys filled the flat: "Food, Glorious Food/We're anxious to try it/Three banquets a day/Our favourite Diet/Food, Glorious Food."

Sherlock grimaced. Greg laughed. "Yeah, I know… irritating, isn't it? I hope so; It's on a continuous loop and it goes off three times a day to remind you to get off that sofa and eat something." He stopped the offending song from the musical Oliver, and then pressed another button. The thumping bass line of Bon Jovi's Bad Medicine boomed out. "And this one will go off at 9am and again at 9pm."

He stopped the music and pressed another button. This time the guitar chords and drum beat of The Who filled the flat. Roger Daltrey's gravelly voice belted out "The policemen they're acting so tough/they need water/Good water/They need Water."

Sherlock glowered.

"Yeah, I know- not to your taste. Tough. Get over it. You won't be able to ignore these. Just eat, drink and take the bloody medicine. Let the phone tell the time for you. Before you know it, you'll have your speaking clock back in the flat when John returns."

Greg plugged the phone into its recharge cable, and switched it on. "On my way out, I’m going to tell Mrs Hudson what I’ve done, and she’s going to check to make sure you haven’t deleted these, or stuffed the phone into a sock in your drawer. And, if I find you've let the battery run down, I'll return and plug it in again, Sherlock. I will make the time."

With that, Greg smirked, and left.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: If you want to know why Sherlock is on this medicine, read my story Crossfire. Music refs: Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSjZ-x7yZj4 Bon Jovi's Bad Medicine is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Ak8oQO8PQ and The Who's piece Water is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMcTLBlkHDI . For your listening pleasure, or not.


End file.
